Life is merciless, love isn't

Are you my psychiatrist? Am I your patient?

When Ranbir Kapoor's character, Ved, utters these words to Deepika Padukone's Tara, he is articulating what the best of relationships are at their core. We are each other's sounding boards and punching bags, best friends and worst enemies, lovers and haters, nurturers and destroyers. Imtiaz Ali's Tamasha shows love as it often is - ugly and beautiful, uplifting and depressing. Always enthralling.

Ved and Tara meet as strangers in Corsica (she is an Asterix fan, Mona Darling, he is Don) and fall into a friendship that is easy, warm, and relaxed. What awaits them at home is their real selves.

Which brings us to the crux of the movie. Who are we? Tu kaun hai, asks a song, and indeed is Ved the charming Don who meets Tara in Corsica or is he the serious-minded, well behaved, very average young man who lives his life in Delhi according to a specified routine. Imtiaz Ali becomes a little heavy handed in underlining the robotic nature of Ved's real life, but his unravelling is beautifully captured.

This is a meninist movie, arguing for the freedom of men. Should they be azaad panchhi or lakeer ka fakeer? Tied down to duty, social responsibility, parental expectations, Ved has allowed everyone else to write his story. He has to learn to tell his story, his way, with his ending. But in Imtiaz Ali's world - and indeed in the real world - it is possible only if you find the right person to unlock that truth. And the answers lie in what we were before we lost our way.

Life is bleak, Tamasha seems to say, and the only way to make it better is to love - yourself and those around you.

As the wonderful song "Agar Tum Saath Ho" says,

Mujhe lagta hai ke baatein dil ki

Hoti lafzon ki dhokebaazi

Tum saath ho ya na ho kya fark hai

Bedard thi zindagi bedard hai

Life is merciless indeed and Ved's character knows that. But as stunted as Ved is, Tara is evolved, and like Meera in Imtiaz Ali's earlier Love Aaj Kal has infinite patience. She knows what she wants and is convinced the stranger she met in Corsica is the truer than the Ved who lives and works in Delhi.

If there was any doubt that Ranbir Kapoor is the finest actor of his generation, it has been laid to rest in Tamasha. He is exquisite as Ved whose rages disguise who he really wants to be. As he says to his frequent partner in crime, his mirror, when he is at a particularly low point in his relationship with Tara, he can either stay cool or become a Majnu who tears his clothes and wanders the streets looking for his lost love.

In effect, he does wander, looking for himself. His Safarnama is to look for his true self. Imtiaz Ali's movies are always about journeys, and as he shows in Tamasha, the most difficult journey is the one within. Ranbir is able to capture that depth of feeling well, his eyes perpetually welling with tears, his anger sudden and shocking.

Deepika is an able companion, the catalyst who sends him off on his journey of self discovery, joyously in love and then slowly losing her lustre.

Both of them are a delight to watch, especially together, possibly one of the most popular onscreen couples, never mind their personal love lives.

They play off each other's strengths and Imtiaz Ali is able to use their silences to complete effect. You don't need to say much when you have two such elegant performers on screen.

Do keep your tissues handy.